French Polynesia

1990 -- I don't remember what islands were the ones that we visited, but they were very green. At the first one I had fun picking up falled frangipanis and making wreaths with them to put around our necks. The locals wore them a lot, and I thought it would be fun to make some. Unfortunately, my mother thought that it was cute, and had me making heaps and heaps. I'd collect the flowers, and use very long pieces of pineneedle-like stuff to hold it all together. Before too long the entire boat was covered in bruised frangipanis that lost their scent quickly and turned brown before we could turn around.

In Tahiti, we visited some friends of my parents—and this was where I first realised my disgust for boiled zucchini. We got a pile of shirts and hats from these friends of my parents'—all with "Banco Socredo" on them. I collected a fair number of smoothed pieces coloured glass there … I thought them "treasures" because they were colourful and smoothed by the ocean over time. We also went window-shopping at the jewelry stores; most of them were black pearls, absolutely divine jewelry. I wanted some of the stuff there, but it was not to be.

Bora Bora proved to be a bit frightening. We had a tropical storm go through, and the mooring we were at wasn't strong enough, so Pampero ended up on the rocks on the shore. The folks at the local resort were nice enough to give us one of the huts to stay in while we got her off of the rocks and patch her up. The paper had us as "an American couple" and another had us as "Australians", again neglecting to mention myself or my brother. Other yachts were shored in the storm; we were one of the lucky ones. It would have been rather horrid to be so close to Australia and have Pampero wrecked.